Llama 3 70B Instruct vs Llama 3 8B Instruct
Llama 3 70B Instruct (2024) and Llama 3 8B Instruct (2024) are compact production models from AI at Meta. Llama 3 70B Instruct ships a 8k-token context window, while Llama 3 8B Instruct ships a 8k-token context window. On MMLU PRO, Llama 3 70B Instruct leads by 16.9 pts. This comparison covers specs, pricing, API access, capabilities, benchmarks, input and output token costs, and production fit for coding and agent workloads.
Llama 3 8B Instruct is ~1900% cheaper at $0.02/1M; pay for Llama 3 70B Instruct only for provider fit.
Decision scorecard
Local evidence first| Signal | Llama 3 70B Instruct | Llama 3 8B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | provider-routed production | provider-routed production |
| Decision fit | Coding, Classification, and JSON / Tool use | Coding, Classification, and JSON / Tool use |
| Context window | 8k | 8k |
| Cheapest output | $0.40/1M tokens | $0.05/1M tokens |
| Provider routes | 18 tracked | 17 tracked |
| Shared benchmarks | MMLU PRO leader | 4 shared |
Decision tradeoffs
- Llama 3 70B Instruct holds a shared-benchmark lead on MMLU PRO, ahead by 16.9 points.
- Llama 3 70B Instruct has broader tracked provider coverage for fallback and route flexibility.
- Local decision data tags Llama 3 70B Instruct for Coding, Classification, and JSON / Tool use.
- Llama 3 8B Instruct has the lower cheapest tracked output price at $0.05/1M tokens.
- Local decision data tags Llama 3 8B Instruct for Coding, Classification, and JSON / Tool use.
Monthly cost at traffic
Estimate token spend from the cheapest tracked input and output route or tier on this page.
Llama 3 70B Instruct
$420
Cheapest tracked route/tier: Hyperbolic AI Inference
Llama 3 8B Instruct
$28.50
Cheapest tracked route/tier: DeepInfra
Estimated monthly gap: $392. Batch, cache, alternate speed tiers, and negotiated pricing are excluded from this local estimate.
Switch friction
- Provider overlap exists on AWS Bedrock, DeepInfra, and OctoAI API (Deprecated); start route-level A/B tests there.
- Llama 3 8B Instruct is $0.35/1M tokens lower on cheapest tracked output pricing before cache, batch, or negotiated discounts.
- Provider overlap exists on GCP Vertex AI, AWS Bedrock, and Microsoft Foundry; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Llama 3 70B Instruct is $0.35/1M tokens higher on cheapest tracked output pricing, so quality gains need to justify the spend.
Specs
| Specification | ||
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2024-04-18 | 2024-04-18 |
| Context window | 8k | 8k |
| Parameters | 70B | 8B |
| Architecture | Decoder Only | Decoder Only |
| License | Llama 3 Community | Llama 3 Community |
| Openness | Open weights | Open weights |
| Weights | Available | Available |
| Code | Unknown | Unknown |
| Commercial use | Commercial use: conditional | Commercial use: conditional |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2023-12 | 2023-03 |
Pricing and availability
| Pricing attribute | Llama 3 70B Instruct | Llama 3 8B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.40/1M tokens | $0.02/1M tokens |
| Output price | $0.40/1M tokens | $0.05/1M tokens |
| Providers |
Capabilities
| Capability | Llama 3 70B Instruct | Llama 3 8B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | No | No |
| Multimodal | No | No |
| Reasoning | No | No |
| JSON / Tool use | No | No |
| Structured outputs | Yes | Yes |
| Code execution | No | No |
| IDE integration | No | No |
| Computer use | No | No |
| Parallel agents | No | No |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Llama 3 70B Instruct | Llama 3 8B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU PRO | 57.4 | 40.5 |
| HumanEval | 72.6 | 68.2 |
| Instruction-Following Evaluation | 77.8 | 59.5 |
| Massive Multitask Language Understanding | 82.0 | 76.9 |
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Last reviewed: 2026-07-11. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.